The present invention relates a method and an apparatus for data transfer.
An information processing apparatus so far proposed, for example, a video image processing system (such as that disclosed in Treatises of Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers of Japan 85/4 Vol. J68-D No. 4 and Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 58-215813) is provided with a plurality of processors, and the microprograms as the contents of the microprogram memories therein are adapted to be exchanged when scope of processing is enlarged. In such a case, the microprograms are supplied from a program supplying portion which in general is formed of a host computer to each of the processors, and it is adapted, for example, such that microprograms are exchanged on request of a user effected by his turning on a switch.
When a plurality of short programs are to be sequentially executed by a processor, for example, it is a general practice that the programs are sent one by one to the processor each time one program has been executed.
If there are a plurality of data processors and different programs are to be transferred to the plurality of processors, it is generally practiced that the processor to which a program is to be transferred is selected for each program to be transferred.
When such a transfer system was adopted that a plurality of short programs were to be sequentially sent to a processor for execution, the transfers had to be repeated the same number of times as the number of the programs there were and a large portions of the processing time was taken for the transferring, and so, there was such a defect that the processing speed as a whole was reduced considerably.
And, when the systems was such that a plurality of different programs were to be transferred to a plurality of processors and the processors were to be selected for each program to be transferred thereto, it was necessary to provide an arrangement for selection control of the processors, and so, there was such a defect that the circuit became rather complex and large in scale to meet such transferring requirement.